When Geniuses Go Nuts

There's an unacknowledged problem with "thinking outside the box." Sometimes the parameters of the box are helpful, sometimes thought becomes non-thought when it escapes the box.

You know, for instance, that the same outre qualities that make Morrissey such a brilliant songsmith and stage performer and cult icon are the very same qualities that make him think Winston Churchill was a murderous psychopath, that George W. Bush and Tony Blair are equal to — or worse than — Osama Bin Laden, that America is not, in fact, the world. (Talk to the hand holding the Big Mac, Moz.)

On a spectrum of hate-to-see-it insanity, there's a very special place occupied by David Lynch, probably the most interesting filmmaker of the last twenty-five years. I'll always rank Blue Velvet as an American classic the way Cindy Sherman's photography is classically American. (Billy Bragg spotted this parallel in the song "Cindy of a Thousand Lights," which begins: "Blue Velvet America, half glimpsed in the headlights between the trees.")

Yes, the restrained beauty of The Elephant Man. Has there ever been celluloided a more enthralling, lavish failure than Dune? And don't let's get started on the lesbian love scene between Naomi Watts and Laura Elena Harring in Mulholland Drive. So Lynch as director, we know. He gives great mind-fuck.

But then there's Lynch as 9/11 scholar and, well… See for yourself.